First up: Microsoft is doing something progressive here, even if it is only a little step in the right direction, so they should be commended for it. That said

First up: Microsoft is doing something progressive here, even if it is only a little step in the right direction, so they should be commended for it. That said, the article (annoyingly) doesn't give any information to help the reader decide if this is a meaningful improvement or not. Neither does microsoft's "carbon fee impact" report [1]. Here's a crude estimate by looking at the financials from microsoft's 2014 annual report [2]: revenue: 87b income tax: 6b salaries: 30b (my crude guess) other expenses: 30b (my crude guess) profit: 22b To sort-of-emulate the GDP calculation, let's combine profit and salaries into one USD$52b bucket. Let's round it to USD$50b / year. The carbon intensity of the US economy is somewhere between 0.4 and 0.3 kg CO2 / USD$. Let's say it is 0.35 kg CO2 / USD$ [3]. Based upon these figures, assuming that microsoft is a "typical" subset of the entire US economy (almost certainly not true, but we have no data otherwise), we might expect it to be responsible for an emissions footprint of USD$50b / year * 0.35 kg CO2 / USD$ = 17.5 * 10^6 tons CO2 / yr. Back to the article. The article mentions the figure of a reduction of "7.5 million metric tons of CO2". Note that this isn't a reduction per year, I believe it is a estimate of lifetime net reduction in CO2 emissions due to the long-term projects they've funded both internally and externally. So, now we're in a position to claim (very crudely) something like: assuming microsoft has a typical carbon intensity for subset of the US economy, the profit and salaries claimed by microsoft in 2014 indicate that microsoft is responsible for something like 17.5 million metric tons of CO2 / yr. So, in a single year, we expect them to produce more than twice as much CO2 pollution as the total projected lifetime impact of their environmental projects to date. That said, it is great that they are doing this! They should merely do more of it! So should other companies and countries! [1] http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/working-responsibly/principled-business-practices/environmental-sustainability/ http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/wo... [2] http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar14/index.html [3] http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein_2014_Persistent%20growth%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20and%20implications%20for%20reaching%20climate%20targets.NatureG.pdf http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein...